The film Arrival, based on the novella “Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang has already achieved legendary status. Both the film and story explore ideas of time, language, communication, and alien life. Since these are themes dear to this show, we convened a panel of fans/ authors to discuss the film in depth. By a strange coincidence, all of my guests are featured in the upcoming essay collection entitled UFOs: Reframing the Debate, and this is the first time that they have all appeared together.

MJ Banias, Joshua Cutchin, Red Pill Junkie, and first time RM guest Ryan Sprague joined me to kick around themes and ideas presented by Denis Villeneuve’s film, and how they inform and comment on pop culture, its predecessors in film and TV, and even the UFO issue, or at least how we study it.

The conversation veered from the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (which posits that your language determines your reality,) to the tricksterish aspects of the aliens in the film, and even to the varieties of how we experience inspiration. We also responded to listener comments during the program.

In 2005, Nick Redfern released Bodysnatchers in the Desert to a storm of shock, controversy, and whining. It took the Roswell story and turned it on its head be suggesting that the events of 1947 were caused by the failure of diabolical experiment in aerospace medicine using balloons, advanced aircraft, and unfortunate human test subjects.

Last week, the sequel to that book The Roswell UFO Conspiracy: Exposing A Shocking And Sinister Secret was released. The volume takes the information presented in the first title and provides more evidence to suggest that human experimentation and use of sinister Japanese and Nazi experiments on “endurance” was utilized and covered up by the U.S. in the years just after WWII.

Nick talked about his original sources for the story, how it would have been highly unlikely for them to have collaborated, and more supporting evidence that has come to light in the last 12 years. We also discussed how the facts of what was reported, or at least has become part of the story (the indestructible metal, the hieroglyphs, and the debris field) may have become confused or conflated by witnesses and investigators over the years.

The final word may never be forthcoming on this “creation myth” of modern UFO lore, but as we discussed on the program: 1) We have to look at the possibilities of what was likely and at least consider that there may be a mundane (albeit distasteful) story behind the Roswell incident, and 2) The UFO research community has hung too much of their modern credibility on this case, and this may make it impossible to look at it objectively.

Susan Demeter-St.Clair came to my attention by way of the forthcoming book wherein we are both featured authors. Demeter-St.Clair argues that the high-strange aspects of UFO (and other) encounters, in addition to perceived psychic phenomena are the path to a more rich understanding of this part of human experience.

Susan can trace her own weird experiences back to childhood, and we spoke about her sightings of little figures that resembled elves, and her later perceptions of a wolf entity that seemed to comfort her. The encounters ended when she became a teenager and then came flooding back in the form of an unequivocal UFO sighting when she was 23 years old. She feels that this background helps her when interviewing witnesses, since she can empathize with their plight and put people at ease so more of their story can be told. We both agreed that researchers need to engage with the phenomenon in some way for any progress to be made.

She lamented the ghost research community’s fixation on the “DPH” (Dead People Hypothesis) which she thinks is just as limiting as the ETH (ExtraTerrestrial Hypothesis) in the search for understanding and possible breakthroughs. We also talked about the late Jim Moseley and loss of his sense of humor in the UFO field. We also agreed that peer review in UFO study seems to consist mostly of online troll attacks.

Based on an interview I conducted with my longtime friend Mike Marinacci in early 2105, I was contacted by a representative from Ronin Press about him possibly writing a book consisting of the entries from his Caifia’s Children blog. Fast forward to 2017, and the wonderful California Jesus has just been released.

We spoke about this genesis and the weird characters who have arrived in California over the past couple of centuries to peddle their brands of Christianity, which have ranged from the simply strange to the downright frightening and even illegal. William Monéy, the man who published the first English language book in Los Angeles (with a Spanish translation alongside the text) also performed such stunts as having himself buried alive to prove his faith and religious authority. (He screamed immediately to be let out as the dirt fell on top of the box he was in.)

We also examined the birth of the modern Pentecostal movement in a small house near present-day downtown L.A., Bebe and Thomas Patten, upon whom later televangelists modeled their acts (Thomas berated parishoners for large donations and then said that the Almighty wanted him and his wife to have a big house and shiny new cars) and even the scandal-ridden life of Thomas Jeffers, who was involved with white supremacist groups, weird (for the time) sex scandals, and who spent his life in and out of jail cells.

Due to negative comments about a recent show, I felt obligated to examine a few issues with this program. The gist of the comments were that Radio Misterioso was “unprofessional” and should beware of interviewing friends, so of course I had to get a couple of friends (Josh Cutchin and RPJ) on the program to discuss any merit to the criticism. The main point was that podcasting is not broadcasting, and that the audience for a podcast is interested in hearing a conversation rather than a formal interview. Josh pointed out that Radio Misterioso is a bit of an echo chamber, which is fair and which I shall remedy.

We moved on to a discussion of how to democratize UFO and anomalies study, and how the internet has become perhaps the most insidious echo chamber. We also discussed how a talk on Roswell could bring anything new to the table with some interesting suggestions from both guests. Echo chambers within echo chambers!

From April 6th to the 9th, a small group meet called “Paramania” was held in Los Angeles. Fans of Radio Misterioso and Tim Binnall’s Binnall of America podcasts gathered to listen to short presentations and tour the L.A. area. The motto of Paramania is “We promise nothing,” because there are no guarantees except that people will be able to meet and talk to each other and a few authors and researchers who may attend.

I hosted this years meeting and 15 people showed up from all areas of the country and even one (Red Pill Junkie) from Mexico. On the final evening, we gathered in listener Steve Ray’s hotel room to broadcast a live program. The participants discussed tulpas, the secret space program (with author Walter Bosley, who was with us) as well as online questions from the audience. One of the group (Zach Copley) had left for home already, but in a first for Radio Misterioso (and perhaps in podcasting) he listened to and then called in to the program from 30,000 feet using the wifi signal on the airplane.

There was drinking and revelry, but also some interesting and intelligent conversation, which is what happens when you get a group like this together. Please inquire at the RM Facebook page if you are interested in being added to the group list. Much filtering and editing was required to get this recording into a format that was acceptable, so please excuse any technical issues.

I’ve been aware of MJ for a couple of years now, but on the occasion of the upcoming May release of UFOs – Reframing the Debate, a book in which we are both featured, we started to talk and decided an interview was inevitable.

F0r the first 20 minutes of the conversation, we actually discussed issues with my Co-creation hypothesis idea, and MJ pointed out some issues with my nascent theorizing. He correctly remarks that it attempts to bridge the gap between the ET hypothesis and the so-called Psycho-Social hypothesis of UFOs.

MJ is actually an investigator for MUFON in Canada and he discussed the value in talking to witnesses and the frustration he has with the organization, particularly the paperwork, which he sees as restrictive. We also delved into the idea that UFO study is philosophically different than other paranormal pursuits such as cryptozoology and ghost hunting in that the entities behind it (if there indeed are any) are in a different category. As he put it, “Aliens can take over the world, Bigfoot and ghosts cannot.”

Ever since my conversation (with Jeremy Vaeni and Tyler Kokjohn) about the singular Project CORE, I knew that Jeff Ritzmann was someone that didn’t just complain about the state of research, but was actually taking active steps to delve into some of the more unhrealded and esoteric areas of UFO study. I was recently reminded about his new endeavour (Project Oculus) which attempts to document strange lights and other goings-on in his home.

We spoke about the aims of CORE (such as asking supposed abductees different questions than usual, for example “what was your life situation before and after your experience”) and the difficulty of describing your position on these subjects to most people once you get beyond a certain point in your studies. Jeff also discussed his concept of paranormal experiences occurring in “liminal” spaces and periods – Places and times that are transitions from one state to another. He believes the best way to stop unwanted encounters with strangeness is to make your life as routine and predictable as possible: The normal is anathema to the paranormal.

We also delved into Oculus and what he hopes to accomplish with the project. At the end of the program, Jeff described how to possibly create your own UFO sighting (or perhaps something similar) but warned that people should probably not try it.

Chris may hold the record for most appearances on Radio Misterioso, dating back over 10 years. Since that first talk, we have become friends, mainly because he refuses to be pigeonholed as a researcher or in his opinions.

He described the UFO tours he conducts in the Sedona area, and although he guarantees nothing, says that about 1/5 of the tours actually result in apparent sightings of unexplained aerial phenomena. He described his approach to the tours and how he “deprograms” his audience about what they think UFOs might be.

We spoke about language, culture, and media and how it affects what people think they see and experience during a paranormal encounter. He also mentioned his theory that UFO activity seems to increase in this country during military drawdowns and when the party in the Oval Office changes. Also discussed: How we could possibly put ourselves in a state of mind to experience the paranormal, the futility of trying to explain where a researcher may be coming from, and a strange cattle mutilation that occurred close to a rancher’s home while he was watching a herd slowly circle something in a pasture. As always, a great “inside baseball”- type talk with an experienced researcher and author.

David Weatherly is known as an investigator with a wide-range of interests and expertise. We met last year at the International UFO Conference and found that we had similar views on many paranormal topics. What I admired about him was that he seemed to have no set agenda and had no problem discussing any theory or idea. He is perhaps best known for his book The Black Eyed Children. It is because of this that we didn’t mention the subject at all. He also written other books on paranormal entities and publishes a Bigfoot studies journal called Woodknocks. His newest, Haunted Toys, was released last month.

We sat in a couple of comfy chairs in my room at this year’s conference and explored ideas about manifested thoughtforms (also known by their Tibetan name: tulpas) the Philip experiment, bigfoot as a physical being with paranormal abilities (something I hadn’t considered before) and his investigations of ghostly disturbances at the Ripley Museum in Florida. He is as thoughtful and non-dogmatic as they come in this field, and that is rare.

My first and only (so far) in-studio interview at my new place (my desk at home) was with Aaron Dabbah (also known as “EsoterX.”) As I say somewhere in this program, his writing makes me feel like I am learning about something that I don’t want to. In this episode, we talked about folklore as an early warning system, skeptics vs. believers (who often have the same ego motivations for their opinions) and the “phantom clown” phenomenon considered as a chaotic trickster manifestation (such as the mudhead kachina pictured above.) Later in the program, we took an extended sidetrack into writers whom we admire. He lives in town, so we’ll be talking again soon.

The post title refers to Aaron’s contention that if we weren’t supposed to see paranormal things, then the ability should have been evolved out of our brains by now.

On January 5th, writer Leslie Kean released a story at the Huffington Post about an infrared video of a seemingly mysterious object traveling through Chilean airspace on November 11, 2014. The images were captured by a camera mounted on a helicopter of the Chilean Navy. They gave the video to their official UFO investigative group (the CEFAA) to study and see if the object could be identified. They declared it unidentified and passed the story on to Kean.

On January 6th, using the information provided in the article, a preliminary analysis by the skeptical group Metabunk guessed that the object was a passenger aircraft departing from the Benítez International Airport in Santiago. Being a licensed pilot, I took an immediate interest in this case. By January 7th, after going through all of their analysis points in detail, I found that I agreed with virtually all of their findings and said so at the RM facebook page. On January 17th, Kean magnanimously wrote a follow-up article that basically said she and the CEFAA were most likely in error.

Alejandro spoke about this saga, and how it is another lesson for the UFO community and interested parties. I offered my observations about the skeptical explanation, and we discussed how it became obvious very early on how the assumptions made by the Chilean authorities were wrong. Later, we asked who are the “authorities” we listen to and how we determine that they actually are authoritative.

In the last third of the program, we discussed the upcoming International UFO Congress, the speakers, and their subjects, some of which are surprisingly progressive for a major gathering.

Old buddy Tim Binnall of Binnall Of America called and suggested we continue the growing tradition of our year-in-review shows. “Great idea!” I said. Among other subjects, we covered UFOs in the election and how the subject may be in a fallow period entering into the next administration (but due for a possible renaissance from within) the Creepy Clown Panic of the summer, and all the celebrities that seemed to have left us this past year. There was also some discussion about the Chilean UFO video story that had just broken the week before. That and a whole lot more. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

Ever since Josh Cutchin hipped me to the imminent arrival of Arrival, I’ve been waiting eagerly to see it. Radio Misterioso friend Red Pill Junkie and I had seen it within a few days of this show, so all the ideas were still fresh. We began with by looking at how anomalies and UFO research are changing for the better in many ways. The barriers between bigfoot researchers, cyrytozoologists, and those interested in psychic phenomena seem to be falling, even in the mainstream groups. We discussed the value of smaller groups and the need to work with people you may not agree with, but trust implicitly.

The themes in Arrival provide many helpful suggestions for UFO study. It points up how language creates our perceptions of time and reality, and how we are prisoners of our assumptions. We also discussed how an awareness of alternate perspectives may ultimately save us from ourselves. We ended with the concept that an idea has to be alive in people’s minds and evolve to continue to be useful.

The show is one long spoiler, so don’t listen if you haven’t seen the movie yet. As of this posting, the film has fallen out of wide release.

This year, I decided to have a partner on the holiday-themed wacky tunes show. Author and musician Josh Cutchin is an aficionado of strange music, and he brought along a nice crop of weirdness for the 2016 edition of this Radio Misterioso tradition. We started with Porky Pig (or someone who does a very credible impression) singing “Blue Christmas,” and it went downhill from there! We also featured three Yogi Yorgesson tracks, and a cover of “Please Daddy Don’t Get Drunk This Christmas” by John Denver. Merry Happy!

Wren Collier has an amazing blog called Liminal Room where he addresses such ideas as alien anatomy, time and causality, and if an extra-human intelligence is capable of controlling us. These are weighty subjects which I believe go right to the heart of the anomalous, since the way he looks at them forces us to take a step back and look at how we look at things rather than assuming that we are separate from our environment.

In this mind-wringing episode, we had fun talking about how we see, understand, and process information. Wren is sharp and I had to keep up, which made this a lot of fun. We compared AI to ET and wondered if AI is going to go out of control and become our robot overlords. We also had a light debate about the individual capacity for learning. Wren talked extensively about a book called Amazon Beaming, which is the story of a professional photographer who was stranded in the Amazon with a tribe who apparently communicated in some sort of non-verbal language.

After the wonderful East Coast Paraconference, Paul Kimball put us up for one night in a haunted hotel in his hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia. Before the event, he took us on a guided tour of the province, including a pilgrimage to the alleged UFO crash site in Shag Harbour. Sitting on the roof of our hotel, we discussed the events of that weekend and just about anything else that came to mind while we had a few beers and Tim tried to get a hookup on Tinder. We also talked about who can claim the title of “most influential ufologist,” praised the organizers of the conference for their non-dogmatic stance, and apparently annoyed some other guests of the hotel. Aaron also performed his soon-to-be-famous impressions of legendary UFO researcher and Men In Black originator Albert K. Bender.

Following on the heels of his groundbreaking A Trojan Feast (about food encountered in UFO and other paranormal experiences) Joshua Cutchin has recently released his second book The Brimstone Deceit.

We started off with a little shop talk about writing books and how great it is to see something you have been working on for so long finally show up in reality. Josh told me the funny story of how he came up with the title and we jumped into a discussion about smells and UFOs and other weirdness. He says that sulfur compounds are some of the easiest smells for the human nose to detect, which seems not entirely coincidental when it is traditionally connected with negative encounters and evil. The smell connects many seemingly disparate phenomena (such as UFOs and Bigfoot.) Something definitely wants to be noticed. He also mentioned the phenomenon of witnesses who have a strange encounter and carry around a weird odor for the rest of their lives.

The part of the show were taken up with gushing about the movie Arrival and what it might be like (the show was recorded a couple of months before release.)

A few months ago, longtime listeners Stephanie Quick and Steve Ray told me that they had been experimenting on me. They heard me complain about a lack of first person paranormal experience amongst researchers, or specifically, myself. To that end, they devised a psychic influencing experiment to see if they could affect the content of the shows by concentrating on a theme. For instance, On a show recorded on January 18, 2015, the focus chosen was “heat,” and a car fire erupted right next to my car parked on the street below the studio. This was the most spectacular example, there were other more modest “hits” throughout the months-long experimental period. The last third of the show was taken up with discussions of Zen temples and the power of a positive mindset.

Excel files and images documenting the experiment can be downloaded here.

Joining me for this RM popup show were Michael Hughes, Seriah Azkath, and Josh Cutchin. We all agree that UFO study can be changed and improved by some sort of personal involvement with the subject and whatever causes it. More people working along these lines would be a good thing and the time appears to be ripe. Subjects discussed included: ritual magick, chaos magick, DMT, Whitley Strieber, tulpas and whether people can handle what might happen if the abyss or anything living there stares back (or worse.) It was a lively and fast-paced talk. Michael brought up a forward thinking researcher I hadn’t heard about in years and who was making these connections 20 years ago: a guy who called himself “Brother Blue.” We called for people to get personally involved with the phenomenon in whatever way they can and then, and most importantly, get back to us and others with their reports and findings. Go!

Nick is of course an old friend and having him on the show is just an excuse to catch up and talk shop, although we spent an amazingly substantial amount of time on his new book: Women In Black: The Creepy Companions of the Mysterious M.I.B. Nick can say whatever he wants to on my show and he did. We spoke quite a lot about Albert K. Bender and his occult interests and experiences, and a bit about his involvement with alchemy, of all things. The subject of fairy lore came up, and some of the similarities to aspects of visits from the Women In Black. Nick found that these entities, while having a similar M.O. to their male brethren, tend to act more like what we think of a vampires, at least in their theatrical aspects, being more seductive and less overtly threatening. We even got to a case of a woman in white who harassed a witness to an apparent whale mutilation in the UK.

Just a few days ago, I was alerted to a strange sighting from the UK in 2009. The witness, (who wishes to remain anonymous, and along with 3 others) reported seeing a passenger aircraft flying dangerously low over the British countryside. As they approached closer, they realized that the object appeared to be hanging perfectly still in mid-air. This was rather disconcerting, along with the fact that the airplane was perfectly white, with no markings whatsoever. We talked about this, my own stationary UFO sighting, and what might be happening to witnesses of weird stuff.

This morning I saw a post from Daniel Malone on facebook with a map of the area around the recent mysterious and disturbing Greenville, South Carolina clown sightings. He pointed out that the area is also a UFO hotspot, which of course got my attention.

In a couple of hours, we arranged to talk about the facts and implications of this strange, but not unfamiliar phenomenon, as Loren Coleman (who coined the term “phantom clowns” in 1981 for his landmark book Mysterious America) has recently pointed out. Show friend Skylaire Alfvegren also joined us for historical and symbolic perspectives.

Joshua joined me a second time to delve into our audio vaults of the strange. We had to catch up first, so we talked UFO shop for the first twenty minutes, then right into the weirdness. This time, we decided to give each other 2 songs per turn. Highlights included a band named Hayseed Dixie and their cover of “Walk This Way,” in which you will hear and actually understand the lyrics to this song. A favorite from my virtual vaults was “On the Eve of my Multiplication” performed by Buddy Starcher, whose big hit was “History Repeats Itself” about the similarities between the JFK and Lincoln assassinations. We also listened to a light country ditty entitled “Flying Saucers In The Air,” which I probably haven’t played before.

My favorite co-host Walter returned to tell us about his new book Origins: The 19th Century Emergence of the 20th Century Breakaway Civilizations. The book presents a radical view of when, how and who was behind early controlled manned flight, and how early that this may have been achieved. We started off defining what exactly a “breakaway civilization” is, and moved quickly to a discussion of the famous airship artist Charles Dellschau, and how his beautiful drawings of aircraft from the 19th century may not have been merely fantasies. Walter says he has found many indications that those Dellschau mentions in his “fanciful” recollections were actual people.

Walter further contends that there was a group in Germany who funded the efforts of airship researchers in the U.S. and that these inventors turned on their benefactors when they discovered that the research was for the purposes of war. We also talked about Dr. Solomon Andrews and his demonstration of a controllable airship to Abraham Lincoln’s War department. He says that this was the basis for the first “black project” sponsored by the U.S. Government.

Steve Berg took me out to lunch a couple of years ago and we had a great time. We went again recently when my newest book was released. This was when I found out that Steve’s job was comedy writing and acting, and that he has a fairly successful career doing both. People may know him from the excellent Comedy Central show Drunk History or his acting work on Idiotsitter or even this superbowl ad. To start the show, we watched a video called “Two Hamsters, One Wheel,” and some music I located (titled “Ciocarlia”) that goes perfectly as a soundtrack.

I had some questions for Steve and he had some questions for me. He likes my books and I like Drunk History and comedy, so the show veered between these themes. Steve considers UFO crazies like Steven Greer a form of performance art, and I can’t argue with that at all. Surprisingly enough, he says he was inspired to go into the funny biz by the comedic stylings of character actor Dabney Coleman. I played my bootleg recording of comedy legend Tony Clifton, which impressed Steve. He is worried about the phenomenon of more people (especially college-age kids) who are easily offended and how this is killing traditional comedy and satire.

He asked me about the mysterious Naval intelligence man who was known as “Mike Younger” and our interactions, which forced me to wrack my brain for memories, as well as some of the research leading to Project Beta. We discussed the solution to the moving rocks mystery of Death Valley before a spaced-out dude called in for stilted shenanigans.

Red Pill Junkie (RPJ) and Robert “Burnt State” suggested that they should interview me about my latest book, and I agreed immediately. They are both very “inside baseball” on the subjects I discuss and I thought they would have a great perspective to really delve into the subject matter. For the most part, we concentrated on theories and opinions about how we (as humans) look at the UFO phenomenon and how researchers and other interested parties can frame their questions in different ways.

We started with the idea that perhaps we need to examine the value of subjectivity and how closer encounters seem to affect many witnesses on a deep, individual level. RPJ said the attitude among most UFO fans seems to be “We have iphones, so our model is more valid than yours,” forgetting that some societies have solid traditions of communion with “the other.” We are also limited by our language. We also discussed that some researchers (such as Dr. Leo Sprinkle and Raymond Fowler) even seem to have gone “native” after years of interaction with witnesses.

In contrast to other interviews I have done for the book, this one concentrated more on my favorite parts of the book, such as the alien writing chapter that suggests we can interact with a possible non-human consciousness in ways that are not necessarily direct or that even make sense. As Robert said “We need to have an adequate response in the song, when the ‘other’ calls out to us.”

The illustration above by RPJ was a preliminary sketch for the cover of the book.

The author of the singular and amazing A Trojan Feast joined me to indulge our mutual interest in strange and otherwise outsider music. For the first 20 minutes or so, we talked shop about UFOs. In his recent lectures, Josh was pleasantly surprised to find that civilian research groups were considering other approaches besides the extraterrestrial hypothesis, then we dove right in with the tunes. One of the standouts was the 1972 Italian hit “Prisencolinensinainciusol” which consists of wonderful gibberish that is an attempt to sound like English, or what Italians think English sounds like. It is genius and has become a personal favorite. Other standouts in our musical visit included a cover of “Day Tripper” in Thai, a virtuoso performance on the theremin, and a broken carousel calliope trying to play “76 Trombones.” There is also a seriously dirty blues song from 1935 that forced me to change my itunes rating to “explicit.”

For months now, people have been asking me to interview Seriah Azkath, host of the very popular “Where Did The Road Go?” podcast. Seriah and I found that we had a lot in common in our views on the paranormal. Unlike myself though, he has had a wide variety of strange and sometimes disturbing experiences which he revealed throughout the program. For example, he said he once saw the moon come through the clouds at night and apparently vibrate in the sky. He also talked about how an undiagnosed medical condition was brought under control when he used a kundalini model to deal with it. We also discussed the state of UFO study, possible new models of the phenomenon, and different ways to gather data from sightings, as well as its interconnectedness with other paranormal events. Seriah also mentioned this weird fact: some ghost hunters have seen “midgets” or small humanoid shapes showing up on specialized cameras that seem to be climbing on people. For much of the last part of the show, we engaged in “shop talk” about how and why we do interviews. A fun show with a kindred spirit.

The old quote about those not knowing history who are doomed to repeat it is just as relevant to the study of UFOs as any other subject. For many years now, Chris Aubeck has been chronicling the history of strange objects seen in the sky to show that the phenomenon is much older and more pervasive than most people think.

Chris told me that the very term “flying saucer” was in common usage in the English-speaking world starting in the late 19th century. It referred to clay targets used for trap and skeet shooting, and he argues that the press had a ready-made phrase when Kenneth Arnold reported his sighting in 1947, and which may have affected preconceptions of witnesses and the press afterwords.

In 2003, Aubeck visited Dr. Jacques Vallée at a speaking date in Portugal and asked him to collaborate on a book he was going to call “Return To Magonia.” Vallée at first said “no,” but called him a few months later and agreed to co-author what would become Wonders In The Sky. The book examines reports of strange objects seen in in the sky from antiquity to the late 19th century and weeded out accounts that were hoaxes and misidentifications of natural phenomena by combing through historical records of people, places, weather, and astronomical data. A deluxe edition has been announced.

Since Wonders, Chris has co-authored two other volumes: OOPARTs: Ojetos Fuera De Su Tiempo (Things Out Of Time) (Spanish only) and Return To Magonia: Investigating UFOs In History. We talked about both books and how the use of historical records explained many events that have been attributed to paranormal, unearthly, or mysterious origins have turned out to be false or easily explainable. In Return, Aubeck and co-author Martin Shough picked a top 20 of UFO cases throughout history and found some that were explainable and others that remain unidentified.

Chris has lived in Spain since age 19 and we talked about the convoluted and sometimes harrowing series of events that led him to adopt that country as his home. His next project is an examination of the history of beliefs about extraterrestrial life.

A very fun and informative interview which I enjoyed thoroughly. I hope you will too.

For all my bashing of large UFO groups, I haven’t actually confronted someone from one of those groups to pose some of the questions that I’d been asking almost rhetorically. Hearing about Cassidy Nicholas changed that. For the past two years, she has been Associate Communications Producer for the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON) which puts her in charge of their national media. She is also the author of three books on the paranormal, as well as a field investigator for MUFON, and has hosted many radio interviews. We started out with her experiences as an interviewer and the chance it gives the host to learn directly from the guest, which is something I always like.

How does an investigator keep from imposing their views and even unconscious motivations on a UFO witness? Nicholas says that MUFON field investigators are supposed to adhere to a standard set of questions that have no ET or other bias. She emphasized that they are routinely reminded not to impose any point of view in their reports or questioning. She added that MUFON as a group does not espouse the ET explanation, even though individual members may try to speak for the organization with that belief. I asked of there was any movement towards the inclusion of nonstandard questions about the witness, such as ethnic background as well as subjective data about emotions, feelings, or life changes, and she indicated that they were moving towards some of these goals, and are open to alternate viewpoints.

Cassidy began as a paranormal investigator of ghost and haunting cases, but soon grew tired of the culture of that group, as well as the realization that she might not be able to deal with some of the more disturbing aspects of that world. She says her young son was thrown out of bed in the middle of the night during a period when she was working on a particularly intense case. At one investigation of a site with a myriad of phenomena, she told me that all the various researchers (bigfoot, paranormal, and UFO people) all got along great, which surprised me.

The one statement which impressed me the most in this interview was Cassidy’s response to my question about what she thought was the source of UFO reports and what she might be searching for when investigating a case. “I don’t know,” she said.

Mike’s new book The Messengers defines a new category in close encounter studies. He has singlehandedly created and developed a whole subgenre of the abduction/ encounter scenario with his careful and insightful observations of the imagery of owls that are reported along with strange experiences. He has been studying this phenomenon intensely for about five years. He does not assign the classic abduction scenario to his own strange and sometimes disturbing experiences, and he does not judge or categorize other accounts that he has collected.

He says that the owl connection to abductions is something that has been a factor for a long time, but it was one of the things that major researchers like Budd Hopkins and John Mack considered just another of the many weird outlier events connected with their studies and which they wouldn’t normally reveal because it didn’t fit in a neat box with their main focus. Mike has concluded that as an archetype, the owl imagery fits in very well as a way to view connections between apparent alien encounters and the human history of mythology and symbolism and how they help us deal with issues of the psyche. One of the most striking non-UFO stories that Mike has collected involved a girl who was prevented from committing suicide due to an amazing encounter with an owl.

Allen Greenfield has been in the UFO biz almost since the beginning. He has been on the board of the National UFO Conference (NUFOC) since its inception and was there in the 1950s and ’60s along with James Moseley, Gray Barker, and later, Tim Beckley as they pulled off legendary UFO conferences attended by thousands.

He is also heavily steeped in occult lore, particularly Aliester Crowley’s Ordo Templi Orientis. I have long believed that the mind-expanding rituals of Western Occultism may be an important key to the solution of the UFO enigma, and Greenfield’s 1992 book, Secret Cipher Of The Ufonauts made that connection for many.

On this program, we talked about the early NUFOC gatherings and the strange and famous people who used to show up, including James Randi, who gave a talk about the mysterious Nazca Lines. We also spoke about Jim Moseley and Gray Barker’s juvenile jokes and hoaxes which were pulled on anyone they considered deserving targets, such as John Keel and George Adamski. Greenfield recalled the weird antics of Albert Bender, the man who brought the term and idea of the “Men In Black” into public consciousness. He says that Bender may have been performing some sort of ill-formed rituals that summoned these entities and that he didn’t know how to get rid of them.

In conclusion, Allen said that what needs to be done with UFO study is to use our limited human comprehension to examine various aspects of the unknown and make connections between what we find in order to understand the underlying structures.

On September 27, Gorightly was in town for an interview with the MANdate crew. It just happened to be the night of the “Super Blood Moon” eclipse, so we climbed the mountain to Los Angeles’ famous Griffith Observatory for the festivities. There was no agenda or list of questions and the second-ever remote Misterioso broadcast was glitch-free as we stood on the upper deck between two huge telescopes.

We could see the searchlights from the Hollywood Bowl where Grace Jones was performing as Gorightly described a new UFO book project. He has also learned a bit more about late UFO publisher James Moseley’s mysterious girlfriend and her alleged alien contacts in the 1950s and ’60s. She eventually wrote a book entitled Those Sexy Saucer People. Gorightly has also uncovered a previously unknown flying saucer contactee story from the 1930s. Ever the sleuth, he also shared the story of a UFO sighting wave from France in 1954 and how it may have coincided with a outbreak of ergot fungus poisoning, which mimics the effects of LSD.

We also talked about how much Nick Redfern hates Paul McCartney while we tried in vain to see the eclipse, which was obscured by cloud cover. As soon as the event was over, the skies were clear again. Typical.

A short, but enjoyable show which was limited by the time constraints imposed on us by the remote broadcast software.

Joshua has written A Trojan Feast, a singularly amazing and insightful book about food offerings in UFO and other paranormal encounters. For me, reading it was one of those “Why hasn’t someone thought of this before?” moments.

We began by comparing experiences of meeting authors and researchers we admire and how they turned out to be pretty friendly. Everyone who is interested in these strange subjects learns and builds on the work of those we admire and respect. At about 28 minutes into the program, we actually started talking about the book!

Echoing the words of one my favorite researchers, the late Karla Turner, Josh says the weird details of paranormal encounters are probably where a solution, or part of a solution, lies. A Trojan Feast is full of stories that are strange even for a UFO book, all centering on the subject of food and drink during encounters with “aliens, faeries, and Sasquatch,” as the book’s subtitle indicates.

Significantly, Cutchin has found that much of the food and drink that witnesses claim were given to them adhere to the Hindu “sattvic” diet, which is recommended for seekers of spiritual truth. Also, although we tend to eat a lot of both in North America, meats and candy are virtually never reported.

As we got deeper into the discussion, we talked about the idea of UFO abductions as a form of shamanistic rite returning to a technological society. We also compared “soft” (feelings and impressions and effects on witnesses) vs. “hard” (“just the facts”) research and the value of the qualitative vs. the quantitative. We also agreed that paranormal researchers need to consider how the witnesses and indeed those who talk to them are interpreting the experience and how that may give a false sense of what may be actually happening. He brought up the example of the dress color that people argued about on Twitter and how it shows that perception is individualized.

In a first and exclusive for Radio Misterioso, Joshua is a professional musician who plays the tuba in a brass band, so we ended the show with a private solo on the Sousaphone.

Above: Joe Simonton, who was given flax cakes by UFO occupants in 1961.

Richard Francis Burton was a Victorian explorer, linguist, spy, loner, and scientist. Walter Bosley’s new book (Secret Missions 2: The Lost Expedition Of Sir Richard Francis Burton) speculates that he was secretly tasked to find lost civilizations. We discussed his early life and background, including Walter’s suspicion that he was involved with a secret society at Oxford University in the 1840s. This group supposedly wanted to find out about ancient civilizations to see if they had esoteric knowledge and perhaps ancient technology. Burton worked for the British East India Co. which was essentially a 19th century Wackenhut – a private company with almost sovereign government powers.

Burton visited the US in 1860 and went to Salt Lake City to visit Mormon leader Brigham Young. Walter says that Burton believed the Mormons knew something about the esoteric history of the US and perhaps beyond.

Burton, who documented his travels in minute detail, somehow did not describe one particularly compelling period when he was traveling though the jungles of Brazil in 1868. Walter’s theory is that he was there to look for a lost city described in documents which Burton published himself in his account of the time. We also discussed the strange miles-long prehistoric tunnels of Brazil, which researcher/writer David Childress explored years ago.

Concluding, Walter says that he writes about what resonates personally with him. In this case, he saw a kindred spirit in Burton and his intelligence activities, since Walter is a former government intel employee (FBI and Air Force.)

For no reason whatsoever, the show starts with a few minutes’ discussion of Electro-Voice Phenomena.

Gorightly messaged me a few weeks ago asking if I knew anything about the phenomenon known as the “Missing Fundamental,” which is a strange effect produced by the human hearing system. I said no, but did he want to do a show about it? He said he knew just the guy to bring along.

Gorightly’s buddy John Fenderson is a sharp and eclectic dude. He’s interested in perception and consciousness, and his view that as a pattern-recognizing species, that much of our thinking and delusions flow from this. It’s good for survival, but not for the evolution of ideas. “Schizophrenia is pattern-matching gone out of control,” says Fenderson.

Many years ago, Fenderson and some friends built a few of those plastic bag/ candles hot-air thingies and let them float high over their town. He says that everyone reported seeing the same thing, but interpreted it based on their predispositions. How to quiet the mind and try to iron out some of these fixed beliefs? Some people try isolation tanks. Others meditate or seek answers in psychedelics.

The Missing Fundamental is a phenomenon where the mind fills in a missing harmonic tone and makes us think we are hearing a third singer, instrument or oscillation that is not there. Fenderson says this fact is used in the design of high-end headphones. The effect can actually be “shaped” into a perceived space by the subtle adjustment of frequencies.

The human visual system changes what is seen before we are consciously aware of it. “Most of what you’re seeing, you are actually imagining” says Fenderson. “You’re filling it in based on patterns you expect. When something happens that you don’t expect, very often you won’t see it at all.”

Because of our rationalizing minds, subjectivity and objectivity have soft and fuzzy definitions. Nobody’s life is a straight narrative, we just edit and change our memories to make it sound like one.

The occultist and the scientist and how they are going about achieving their goals in pretty much the same way, even though they seem completely different. As an example of the similarity, we can change our behavior to change life into something we want. This has been experimentally proven.

At his Discordian-themed site Singlenesia, Fenderson published a lock-picking manual that was authored by a group of MIT students and says that it is a metaphor for his whole philosophy of being aware how to hack yourself and your environment. Hacking yourself begins by re-imaging your reality to conform to what you want or want to do.

All these subjects and many more were covered in this very enjoyable program. Many thanks to Adam Gorightly for introducing me to his friend and helping to steer the show.

This conversation was recorded the evening that Paul returned from the conference, where he had just given his presentation that morning. Of course, he is the originator of UFO/ paranormal conferences in Canada/Nova Scotia, since he organized the New Frontiers meet in October of 2008.

Also speaking that weekend were Paul’s uncle-in-law Stan Friedman and famed cryptozoologist and prolific author Loren Coleman. Uncle Stan actually ran Paul’s powerpoint slides for his talk, showing that family is thicker than ideology. During his talk, he also proposed to famed paranormal radio host Tim Binnall. His take away from the weekend was that the mix of presenters (ghost hunting/ psychic stuff/ ufos/ cryptozoology) was unique and worked well.

We also answered a question from a listener about why he won’t be doing another UFO film in the near future, and launched into a discussion of synchronicities where Paul mentioned an earlier episode from 2011 when he was in Los Angeles staying at my place and the synchronicities were running rampant.

One of the events for the weekend was a ghost hunt in and old theater where Kimball had a strange and creepy episode in the basement under the stage. He describes it in detail. In a first for this show, just as he was getting to the scariest part of the story, a voice seemed to cut in to the show feed. See if you can locate it and give us your take on it! (Photo above was taken during the ghost hunt.)

There is no doubt that more than ever, the study of UFOs and related phenomena is in need of definitive change. I had a roundtable discussion with Nick Redfern, Peter Robbins and Richard Dolan about what forms that might take.

As many know, the so-called “Roswell Slides” and the fallout from that episode reminded some that eagerness and the will to believe should never trump even a normal amount of research. Nick criticized the method of release of the slides as clumsy and secretive. Richard maintained that the information was controlled by Adam Dew, the producer who located the slides, and not the researchers.

I brought up the subject of egos, media, and the rush to be first with information and how that should change. Peter suggested that UFO study should be an academic pursuit with the same checks and balances inherent. He uses his own conscience as a guide. Rich talked about peer review, of which he is skeptical because of the lack of standards in the field to begin with. Nick said that we can’t peer review a phenomenon that many people can’t even agree exists. Nick went on to talk about peer pressure and how it shouldn’t affect UFO study.

How do we get rid of UFO=ET? It’s one of many theories, but always takes center stage. Richard acknowledged that no one theory accounts for all the data. Nick and I argue that other theories (such as those incorporating interdimensional and psychological approaches) should get more time.

Is the emphasis on degreed professionals needed? Peter offered that it is, but they also need backing for their work, but agreed with Nick and I that we don’t need to require people to be officially trained professionals to do good work.

Nick wants to see more alternate viewpoints represented in conferences, such as psychedelic drug studies and occult issues. He also mentioned that almost all researchers have had other weirdness and synchronicities enter their lives. Richard mentioned Mike Clelland and his alternate views on the abduction phenomenon and his upcoming book. He also pointed out that we come from a materialistic culture and that determines the direction of research and agreed that it should and will change.

How do we categorize witness testimony? The instrument (humans) which we use to record and report things is fallible, and some of the answers are encoded in the questions. Rich called this a “psychological approach.” My point was that everything with UFO witness testimony is “psychological.” Mundane things like direction and speed may not be, but Nick and I were concerned with UFO reports, how they are gathered, and what categories they are placed in.

Nick brought up the fact that people see what they expect to see in different eras, which suggests a phenomenon that adjusts it appearance as some sort of control system.

The take away from this show is something like this: People who have integrity will continue to contribute, we should ignore or refute bad research and thinking and any new techniques/ theories will come from outside the establishment. Get to work.

Joe Berardi and I have been trying to set up this interview for a few years. The reason I wanted to have him on the show is that he has been the drummer on some of my favorite music ever since he was a member The Fibonaccis, who were active in the 1980s in Los Angeles and remain my favorite band. Soon after that, he was working with former Wall Of Voodoo frontman Stan Ridgway. Along with vocalist/ musician Kira Vollman, he has also been half of the avant-garde duo Non Credo for over 20 years, and finally, he holds down the percussive duties for the uncategorizable sonic party that is Double Naught Spy Car.

We talked music, influences, highs and lows throughout his career, and the time the Fibonaccis had a rain of gym socks thrown at them onstage. We forgot to play “Second Coming,” the Radio Misterioso favorite by the Fibs with lyrics about “swamp gas saucers,” so I added it at the end.

“Smiles” has been a close friend for many years. We met during the ‘zine “revolution” of the 1990s and have been encouraging each other in our pursuits for about 20 years now. Miles helped Radio Misterioso in the early days by maintaining and providing a home for the show at his Anomaly Radio network.

His Anomaly Archives has recently been the recipient of a large collection of books and other ephemera from the collection of the late Bob Girard, who owned the mail order book giant Arcturus Books. We talked about the legacy and relatively little-known interests of Girard, which varied from UFOs to the paranormal and esoteric religions.

Miles was also a member of the Roswell Slides Research Group which discovered the real source of the image that was claimed to be an alien. We talked about what we have we learned from this episode. That led to a discussion of UFO percipients and what the phenomenon may be doing to us. Does this mean we should “reboot” UFO research? Miles suggests that we should make information more open source so that all may participate Miles also discussed the effects of non-human and non-local consciousness on paranormal witnesses.

We reminisced a bit about our history together and our early forays into study of the strange with a group we formed in the 1990s, called the “Texufonia Illuminaughty” comprised of zinesters, writers and artists from Texas and California, hence the name.

Later, we talked about a study of African-American abductees and Adam Gorightly messaged in to tell us that Jim Moseley had a black girlfriend in the 1960s.

We ended with a short discussion of our hopes for future of UFO study.

On Friday May 29th, I received a text message from Bruce Duensing that said “I am in the hospital with crappy WiFi…open heart surgery on Monday.” His daughter posted on his FB page that he passed away on the morning of June 4th, presumably from complications.

This was a shock to my guests “Red Pill Junkie” and “Burnt State” (aka Robert) and to me of course. We were just beginning to communicate on a deeper level with Bruce, sending messages and posts to each other about ideas we had either never thought of or hadn’t developed fully. We got together on the night of June 6th to talk about Bruce Duensing’s ideas and what little we know of his personal life from videos he posted online.

His basic philosophy is the idea that we are not equipped to deal with the paranormal on its own terms, since our perceptions have so many filters before they reach conscious and cultural awareness. The show centered on many concepts:

– You can’t study Ufology with Ufology. UFO study hasn’t kept up with the latest science.
– Energy and information are the same.
– How does the observer effect change what we are thinking about with UFO witnesses?
– Strong emotion inhibits randomness and entropy.
– UFO waves seemingly follow worldwide emotional events.
– Abnormal mental states and shamanism as windows to understanding of the unknown.
– Set and setting as factors in paranormal encounters.

The program opens with a pulled quote from the RM interview of February 1st, and ends with a segment of Bruce from one of his online videos that were located by Robert.

Illustrations of Bruce Duensing’s ideas courtesy of the talented RPJ. The Cafe Tacuba song at the end of the program is Olita Del Atlamar (Little Wave Of The High Seas.)

Gorightly was is town for a couple of days and I couldn’t get in the house because it was full of posion gas, so I invited him for a friendly chat on the show. We have known each other for about 20 years and it shows in the almost (or actually) annoyingly informal nature of this show.

Adam had the great idea right off to use the inevitable sirens that come by the studio as the basis of a listener contest, which of course turned out to be A HUGE FAILURE BECAUSE THERE WERE NO SIRENS THIS TIME. So it was changed to a song guessing contest. Informal!

Since Adam’s latest is entitled Historia Discordia, we talked about the connections between Discordianism founder Kerry Thornley and former New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison. At one point Garrison believed that the Discordian religion was a CIA front. We then read Thornley’s “Epistle To The Paranoids,” which makes vicious fun of paranoids. Many years later, Thornley became one himself. Beware.

We also spoke on the 1990s ‘zine revolution and how we met through that, and how it allowed us to interview the famous “Unicorn Killer” Ira Einhorn in the pages of my old magazine. We went on to talk about the “Varo Edition” of the 1955 book The Case For The UFO by Morris K. Jessup. I also found out from Adam that Jack Parsons’ wife Marjorie Cameron lived a few miles from the Integratron and knew famous UFO contactee George Van Tassel.

We played some Frankie Laine songs and announced the winner of the song-naming contest before escaping.

Taking a break with no scheduled guests, a listener from New York nicknamed “Farusha” answered my call for calls. We quickly dove in to a 45 minute discussion about inflexible opinions, her experience with Russell Targ and his remote viewing class, and her own experiences with non-human consciousness. This was all sandwiched between two thick pieces of wacky music tracks. Nice interlude before getting back into it again.

(Note: This interview, recorded on May 10, 2015, was the first and exclusive talk with some of the group who deciphered the placard writing in the so-called “Roswell slides.”)

The week of May 4, 2015 was perhaps a watershed time for the UFO research world. Images found on old slide film were claimed to be connected to the Roswell Incident and showed what the promoters and researchers they represented said were the dried body of an alien being. Experts were consulted and concluded that the body shown on the slides was not human.

After two years of changing stories and claims by the “Roswell Dream Team” researchers, Mexican TV journalist Jaime Maussan announced that the slides would be revealed to the world in a highly-anticipated presentation in Mexico City on May 5th. Tickets were sold for the show and live streaming was offered for a fee of about $20. Our guest “Red Pill Junkie” actually attended and on this show he describes what transpired.

Three days after the public reveal of the images, a group of researchers announced that they had solved the mystery and that the slides were pictures of the mummy of a two-year-old child found in the Southwestern US in the early 20th century. The vast majority of those who were interested in the mystery of the “Roswell Slides” now agree that their conclusions are correct.

In an exclusive interview, my guests Curt Collins, Paul Kimball, and Lance Moody described the events and cooperation that led to this revelation. The “Roswell Slides Research Group” (RSRG) used freely available image-enhancing software to decode a blurred placard that was visible in one of the images. They also produced a video showing how anyone with a computer can reproduce identical results. TV producer and slide promoter Adam Dew currently maintains that the image was either tampered with by RSRG, or was not processed properly.

While I do not agree with all of my guests’ opinions, it is important to note that a wide variety of viewpoints exist in the RSRG as well, ranging from the strict skepticism of Lance Moody to respected UFO researchers such as Chris Rutkowski, and my friend S Miles Lewis, whom almost no one would categorize as a “UFO skeptics.” The important thing is that they all agreed on this issue.

I will mention that the opinions expressed on the show are not necessarily those of myself or the killradio collective.

The title refers to the fact that as of the date of recording, it has been ten years since the first episode of Tim’s legendary show Binnall of America. For this go-around we again started out with a little “shop talk” about what we do to produce our respective shows, how we conduct interviews, and who were the most influential and conversely, worst guests Tim has had. He also recalled one of his favorite interviews which was about the Dyatlov Pass Incident in which nine hikers were found dead under apparently mysterious (and very creepy) circumstances.

We talked about how large UFO groups (specifically MUFON) should rebrand themselves to guard against irrelevancy and bemoaned the prevalence of stupidity and non-critical thinking in general and on the internet in particular. Favorite TV shows were discussed as well as the good and bad stars of the remote viewing world. We ended up half-jokingly calling for UFO conference of our own, to be held during the eclipse of 2017.

The blogger known as EsoterX (aka Aaron Dabbah) is a rarity. He looks at the world of the anomalous, and instead of asking “Who?” or “How?” he asks “Why?” Trained as an archaeologist and information specialist, he turns his intelligent eye on such conundrums as “Fairy Fishing,” disappearing islands, and why unicorns are jerks.

Aaron asserts that anomalies are not so implausible if you are willing to suspend your disbelief. We started with his premise that the search for the meaning of the anomalous is the important part of the equation and our reaction to weirdness is more important than the actual weirdness itself. Moving through subjects at a leisurely pace, we also discussed the strangest of strange stories, such as an account that Charles Fort repeated about a cat who appeared before a crowd and asked “Hot enough for you?” before disappearing in a puff of smoke. We also dealt with the decline of quality humor and satire before he concluded that “Looking for respectability [as a researcher] is a losing game because you’re playing by rules that don’t apply to what you’re looking at.”

“Burnt State” (or simply “Robert”) is the online alias of a man who has looked deeply into our relationship to the paranormal. After my last appearance on the Paracast, I noticed his comments in their forums and asked him if he would consent to an interview on RM.

Robert is interested in the way that we use storytelling to make sense of the world; particularly the stranger parts. Any witness to something that shouldn’t be has to find a way to make sense of it and in many cases communicate the experience to others. In this insidious way, weirdness remains locked in a context that we have created.

We started out with Robert’s own dramatic UFO sighting from childhood and how it still affects him. He made the case that trauma can be experienced as abuse, violence, or just something that doesn’t make rational sense. Our brains either cover it up or make sense of it with a story that we can handle. We discussed the problem of schizophrenics and how simple talking therapy may help them and others with buried issues.

Robert is a high school teacher and he described the pressures that children and teenagers are subjected to in an age of almost total digital sitmuli and aggressive marketing. He has some novel ways of making his students aware of this and taking back their individuality. He also had an amazing story about his Ouija board experiments.

There is just a sample of our wide-ranging conversation, so I’ll shut up now and let you listen.

P.S. The audio of UFO witness testimony discussed during the show is available here, track 15. See also the story of “Conjuring Up Philip,” mentioned during our talk.

The most important connection we have to examining the paranormal are the witnesses. For too long, researchers have concentrated on how testimony can fit in to preconceived notions of anomalous abduction episodes, psychic occurrences, and ghost sightings. Fields of inquiry are neatly divided into UFOs, cryptozoology, paraspychology, and ghost hunting.

The aim of Project Core is to do away with strict categorization and let witnesses tell their stories without filtering. People who experience apparent entity visitations often report psychic episodes, strange animals, poltergeist phenomena and many other weird events, and the project’s anonymous online reporting format allowed participants to report their experiences without fear of ridicule or censure. Three of the directors of Project Core are credentialed scientists with doctorates in their fields.

Jeremy Vaeni and Jeff Ritzmann both have a history of extraordinary paranormal encounters and Dr. Tyler Kokjohn is a biochemist with a keen interest in these areas not normally examined by science. They joined me for a discussion of what was found, and what it might mean for our understanding of these seemingly disparate subjects. This may be one of the first glimpses of future paranormal research.

Jeremy made a music request for “Stay Hungry” by Twisted Sister, so that’s at the end!

Mike is the author of the touchstone book about a forgotten side of Golden State history, Mysterious California. Published in 1988, it predated the “weird” travel book craze by almost 20 years, and started me on a path to meet him in 2006 when we were co-authors of Weird California. He has been studying the history of non-scheduled religious movements and groups in our home state for more than 20 years, and now chronicles these strange groups and people at Califia’s Children.

We discussed what makes a “cult.” While he is careful to label only the most dangerous groups with that name, Mike pointed out that all religions start out as a cult. People join mainly for a sense of belonging – to be part of a “tribe.” Many of the groups minister to the rejected and the marginalized, and not all have negative effects on the members.

We talked about the strange connection that the Santa Susanna Pass area has in the lore of the Los Angeles area. Krishna Venta, a former convict turned religious prophet whose story bears eerie similarities to Charles Manson, settled there in 1948. He was dead by 1958, killed by suicide bombings by two disgruntled members.

We embarked on an extensive discussion of occultist Manly Palmer Hall and his influence on Los Angeles history and society. We also discussed the notorious Children Of God group and their sexualization of Christianity. Mike gave a unique perspective on Scientology’s concentration on Los Angeles and the power of celebrity endorsement. Near the end of the program, we mentioned the bizarre Incest and Homosexual Church of the Universe, which at its peak had perhaps 4 acolytes.

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